This invention relates to a novel conveyor system for conveying bundle-carrying carts around a closed loop and between bundle loading and bundle discharge regions, and more specifically relates to a novel conveyor for a newspaper mail room and for conveying newspaper stacks from stack tier regions to a loading dock, which may be at a different floor elevation than the stack tiers.
In the conventional newspaper mail room, newspapers from a press are conveyed to one or more stacker devices which stack the newspapers in stacks of a given number, to form stacks which might be about 15 inches in height. Each of the stackers then discharge their stacks onto one or more roller conveyors which carry the stacks to bottom-wrap applying devices and then to bundle tier devices. Each of the bundle tier devices were then connected to a dock conveyor by a series of conveyors and bundles were manually and/or automatically loaded from the dock conveyor. The bundles were then pushed off the dock conveyor when they reached a desired point at the unloading area. The prior art system requires considerable manual labor in the loading and unloading system, and limits the speed at which the distribution system can operate.